A hydrogen station is a system for producing, transporting and storing hydrogen and also charging an object which uses the hydrogen like a fuel cell. To solve problems of gradual exhaustion of fossil fuel and environmental pollution due to the fossil fuel, various technologies using hydrogen have been studied.
In particular, the fuel cell is a power generation system in which chemical energy is converted into electric energy by an electrochemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen to generate electric power. Therefore, it is necessary to stably supply hydrogen as a fuel.
The hydrogen station can be divided into a type of having its own hydrogen generating means, a type of charging hydrogen generated from separate hydrogen generating means, and a movable type. The hydrogen generating means can be also classified into various types according to raw materials used and manufacturing methods.
More detailedly, the hydrogen generating means employs steam reforming using nature gas, electrolysis using water, coal gasification using coal and the like, and particularly, the hydrogen generating means using the steam reforming can use all kinds of hydrocarbons such as natural gas, LPG, LNG, gasoline and kerosene, as raw materials, and also its manufacturing cost is low. Thus, it has been studied widely.
The hydrogen generating means using the steam reforming (hereinafter, called ‘steam methane reformer’) uses a catalyst requiring a high temperature and thus generation of the high temperature is necessary.
However, in a conventional burner, since it has a long flame length and a low temperature, an efficient reforming reaction is not performed by the catalyst and thus productivity of hydrogen is lowered.
Further, since the burner used in a conventional hydrogen station or the reformer has a non-uniform and large flame and a large amount of incompletely burnt components is contained in exhaust gas, and it causes activity of the reforming catalyst to be deteriorated. Therefore, the performance of the hydrogen station or the reformer is lowered.
Furthermore, in case that a flashback of the flame is occurred and thus the flame is not generated in a designed direction, the reforming reaction itself may not be generated in the steam methane reformer and also other parts may be easily damaged.